Leadership Development for Baptist Universities



Administrative Leadership for Baptist Universities: Training for the Future

IABCU Annual Meeting

June 1-3, 2008

Introduction

Two decades ago, many thought that the future of Christian colleges and universities—both as faithful embodiments of their religious heritage and as excellent academic institutions—was much in doubt. George Marsden, for example, in The Soul of the American University (1994), pointed to the inherent weaknesses of building Christian higher education upon a dominant cultural consensus rather than intellectual substance in his account of secularizing tendencies from pre-revolutionary America to the twentieth century. On his account, the demise of a significantly Christian culture in America over the last two centuries prompted numerous Christian colleges and universities—including several Baptist ones—to follow suit and secularize. Other significant studies affirmed the essential features of Marsden’ narrative, and did so across denominational lines, within varied institutional settings, and throughout widely varied regions of the country. All of these accounts shared apprehension about the future of Christian higher education, given the trajectory of the past.

Notwithstanding this unhappy analysis, the last fifteen years or so have witnessed a welcomed renewal of Christian higher education in the United States. The rekindling of optimism on behalf of Christian colleges and universities is the product in part of the diagnostic scholarship of historians such as Marsden, scholarship which has helped Christian institutions learn from the missteps of formerly religious but now secularized schools. In addition, national foundations such as Lilly, Pew, and Templeton have made millions of dollars available to Christian institutions since the early 1990s. Valuable new initiatives, several underwritten by charitable foundations, have sprung up in recent years to support graduate students, faculty recruitment, faculty development, and scholarship that enriches Christian intellectual life. The value of these initiatives may be noted through the proliferation of Christian scholarly societies, successful sponsorship of new scholarly journals motivated by Christian concerns, higher numbers of well-qualified applicants for faculty openings, and increased interest among students in exploring careers in Christian higher education.

Though recent years have witnessed gains, many observers of Christian higher education have uncovered a gap—a missing part—in this general climate of revitalization, and that is at the point of leadership within Christian colleges and universities. The Lilly Foundation itself spoke to this matter in a report it issued in 2000. The report noted “a paucity of religiously oriented programs for trustees and senior-level administrators who as leaders, set forth the vision for their colleges, determine policy, lead by example, and set the tone for much of the day-to-day operations of their institutions.” The report goes on to recommend expanded attention to “other key stake-holders in higher education [beyond the faculty.]” (Revitalizing Religion in the Academy, 2000.)

The Need

As important as appropriate faculty hiring and faculty development are for the sustaining and strengthening of Christian higher education, they do not rise to the level of the unique challenges faced by the administrative leaders of Christian colleges and universities. A recurring and important problem chronicled by all of the studies I have noted consists of institutional leadership that variously failed to meet the challenges of the day. For example, James Burtchaell, in his massive work entitled The Dying of the Light (1998), concluded that one of the main reasons, if not THE main reason, formerly Christian schools—including Baptist ones—lost their faith is because those in leadership positions—boards, presidents, provosts, deans, and department chairs—no longer cared or cared enough about the religious identity of their institutions.

It is pretty much a historical fact, according to Burtchaell, that it only takes two indifferent administrations in a row for a university’s Christian mission to be abandoned. That’s all it takes! Call it “Burtchaell’s law”: two indifferent department chairs in a row; two indifferent deans in a row; two indifferent provosts in a row; two indifferent presidents in a row. Burtchaell’s focus was on the presidency and its impact on the total institution, but I think the same general rule can be applied to units within a Christian college or university: Two in a row and the unit is down the shoot. Clearly, without the right leadership for our schools, particularly within the administrations, the restoration of and hope for serious Christian higher education will remain uncertain and always threatened. As is often said of some Christian colleges and universities, “___________ is just one president away from losing its Christian identity, from becoming a secular institution.” Thus, just as the various initiatives for faculty and prospective faculty have given rise to renewed vitality within many Christian institutions, thoughtful and substantive leadership initiatives could similarly bring genuine renewal to Christian and Baptist higher education.

As most of you know, there are a number of mainstream leadership programs available for the training of university administrators. One thinks of the American Council on Education Fellows Program, the Harvard Institute for Educational Management Program, the Bryn Mawr Summer Institute for Women in Higher Education Administration, the Texas A&M Summer Seminar on Academic Administration, and several others. These programs are identified as mainstream because they are essentially secular in orientation, concerned with higher education leadership development in a generic sense, focusing on organizational management, current educational trends, and institutional politics, all of which tend to be interpreted from the perspective of behavioral and social theories. These programs self-consciously exclude theological and moral points of view that are relevant to both leadership development and institutional mission within the context of Christian higher education. As a result, mainstream leadership programs, while certainly valuable, do not provide a suitable context for addressing the mission-distinctive aspects so critical to Christian higher education.

To be fair, there are indeed some development programs available to leaders within Christian higher education today. Efforts of widely divergent quality and scope fall within this category, and include options like the Boston College Institute for Administrators in Catholic Higher Education; the Leadership Development Institutes and the New Presidents Institute of the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities; the presidents’ council of the Christian College Consortium; the Lutheran colleges’ initiative on senior administrative leadership called the Thrivent Leadership Program; and other varied denominationally based efforts, such as the annual meetings of our own association of Baptist schools. But never—at least to my knowledge—have representatives from Baptist universities come together for the specific purpose of education and training in academic leadership and college/university administration—never, that is, until the launching of the “Seminar on Academic Leadership in Baptist Universities” last year at the University of Mary-Hardin Baylor and repeated this year at Baylor.

The Program

One major aspect of the weeklong program is our focus on the importance of sustaining and enlivening the distinctive missions of our universities. This emphasis is what is unique about our leadership seminar in contrast to secular approaches. As representatives of Baptist institutions, we are not a part of just any college or university—we are a part of a Christian university, a particular kind of mission-driven institution, a fact that makes, or certainly should make, a huge difference. Therefore, the first and foremost obligation of an academic administrator in a Baptist university—any Christian university!—is to support and advocate the school’s mission faithfully, day in and day out.

As an academic leader, however, it is not enough to support the mission of your school, as important as that is. You must also be a good administrator, one who is capable of managing well the many processes and human dynamics of academic and university administration. Thus, a large part of being an effective academic leader is being an effective administrator. The latter involves a certain form of knowledge and skill—institutional knowledge, knowledge of higher education and Christian higher education, but also practical wisdom joined with real executive competence. In short, this seminar is designed to help the participants gain a better understanding of administration and its particular practices that have met the test of time. In addition, we hope to equip the participants to deal in a more thoughtful way with the human and moral complexities of institutional life. Whether knowledge or skill, in the seminar we emphasize “management” as a social and ethical practice, one appropriate to the Christian institutions we serve.

We are most fortunate to have as seminar leaders individuals who are themselves both accomplished scholars and administrators. They all care deeply about Christian higher education, thus enabling them to understand our institutions from the inside, so to speak. We begin the seminar, however, at a different point, and that is with self-knowledge. The premise behind this way of beginning the seminar is the belief that leadership is always person-based. Thus, it is helpful to know the leadership-relevant characteristics of specific people, seen both from the inside of the person and the outside, or Birkman and 360 degree.

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